simplepuzzle | Aquatic AU

He buries his face in Chuck's neck and just inhales before pulling back and gripping his shoulder.

"I'm off for the day. You wanna...?"

Come back with him, have coffee or tea or something?

"Yeah."

whatever Raleigh wants to do. Hang out, drink tea, do...something. With him.

...unless Janine's there too.

Raleigh leads Chuck back to his apartment - it's tiny but clean, and not far from the construction site. Raleigh's truck had finally died and it's parked outside, but poor Gipsy needs some parts.

He lets Chuck in, and it's a painfully lonely apartment with the bare furnishing and no decorations.

"...You, uh. Want something to drink?"

Well that's a relief.

....it's also depressing.

"Whatever you're having." He takes his coat off but he's got a thick sweater under that. His skin's under all of that too; he's never letting it out of his sight ever again.

Completely understandable.

"I've got tea and coffee." And water. That's...about it. He decides on tea and fumbles around for the kettle -- his hands are cold and achey, the older he gets the worse off his hands are - and sets the water to boil.

While it heats, he sort of leans on the wall and watches Chuck, confusion still written on his face.

"What're you doing here, Chuck? Really."

Chuck shrugs a little.

"...wanted to see you." Is that not reason enough? "I wanted to make sure you were going to be okay. You didn't want to tell me anything about what you were going to do and...I mean if it's because you didn't want me to find you, that's, I can go."

He just wanted to see him again.

"No, don't go."

His hands grip the wall, using it to hold himself up.

"I wanted you safe, Chuck. That's why I didn't tell you. You shouldn't be on land."

He moves forward, getting his hands on Raleigh and holding him up if he looks like he's going to fall.

"And I haven't been," he says quietly. "Nobody knows me here, I'm not letting go of it ever again, if I didn't find you I was going to leave and stop looking."

The tea heats in the background and Raleigh swallows, eyes moving over Chuck's face, drinking him in and memorizing his features all over again.

"You look good," he says hoarsely, swallowing the lump in his throat. "Didn't think I'd ever see you again."

"For a while I didn't want to see the face of any human ever again," he admits, keeping a hold of Raleigh's arms and almost leaning him against the wall.

"...couldn't manage to forget yours, though." It was almost irritating. He pulls a hand from Raleigh's arm then to run his fingers over his face, as if to reassure himself that it's really there.

He does sort of slump against the wall, though he leans into the touch when Chuck's fingers graze his face.

"Don't blame you. I can't believe you came back at all."

For Raleigh. He's not -- worth the risk.

Chuck's only at risk if people know or he tells anyone. It's been years, Sam's got to have moved on.

"You don't want me to go but I'm not getting the sense that you want me here either," he says quietly. "I had to know you got away too."

Maybe he has, maybe he hadn't. Hard to say.

"I worry for you." It's not really verification either way. He wants Chuck see, but seeing him on land kind of scares him. He doesn't want him trapped again.

"I've been hiding," he says eventually. "I go by Richard Lapierre now."

Raleigh is so confusing, he hugged Chuck so hard when he saw him and he said he didn't want him to go--

Maybe this was a mistake.

"Your dad, right?" He remembered that.

Raleigh seems all right to stand on his own, he thinks, so Chuck takes a step back, giving him room.

"Dads first name, mothers maiden," he says, and Chuck moves back but Raleigh reaches out for his hand, a quiet whine in the back of his throat.

"I've missed you, Chuck. I'm glad you're alright. Never stopped thinking about you."

He looks at Raleigh's hand and takes it after a moment, curling their fingers in together.

"Are you okay?" he demands.

Because for as much as he seems to be taking care of himself, the jury for 'okay' is still out.

Raleigh sighs when Chuck accepts the touch and leans his head back against the wall with a soft thump.

"I'm alive. I...guess I'm okay."

He exists. He lives, breathes, eats - but that's it. He's lost everything, his whole family, and doesn't know how to even begin making himself happy again.

'Alive' and 'okay' aren't the same thing.

"You don't look okay." He squeezes Raleigh's hand, jaw tightening. "...Have you called Janine since you...disappeared?"

Because that was the last time he remembered Raleigh being anything resembling happy. He doesn't know if she'll help, but--she liked him too, he could tell, she'd do what she could to help Raleigh.

He absently thumbs the back of Chuck's hand, rubbing the pad of his thumb over knuckles.

"No."

And he's sorry for that.

"She looked for me. But I can't...go back there." For a lot of reasons.

"She can come here." Chuck can't believe he's arguing for this, fuck, but Raleigh looks so wretched and he just wants to make him better. Return the favor.

"You don't have to tell her everything," in fact Chuck would prefer it if you didn't, "but you can tell her some of why you had to run, she'd understand."

"It's fine, Chuck. It wouldn't be fair to her. I'd never love her like she deserved."

She had to know his heart was somewhere else the whole time they were together, anyway.

Well there's that idea.

"I want you to be happy," he says, stubbornly. "You did so much for me, I'm not leaving you until I know you're going to be okay. For real okay, not just you saying it."

He means it, Becket. Lapierre. Whatever.

Chuck, you are as frustrating and stubborn as you ever were.

"Chuck, you can't stay here. You're...got a life out there. You've got family. You've got the ocean." He's wistful.

"I've literally got nothing. You don't belong here."

Of course he is.

"And you put your life on hold to help me," he says sharply, pushing Raleigh's hand away and scowling at him. "You're so confusing! You said you didn't want me to go, and now you're trying to stop me from staying! I want to help you!"

Stupid stupid human maybe Chuck will leave.

Raleigh whines in the back of his throat again, but then he loses his temper and pushes off the wall.

"I love you, Chuck! I love you, and I can't fucking -- have you! It's never going to be alright for me! Okay?"

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject